


Heaven Calling

by Astrotheology44



Category: Red Crimson(Mention), Shaman King (Anime & Manga), Shaman King Flowers(Mention)
Genre: Character Study, Descriptive/Metaphorical, Elemental descriptions!, Gen, Horo POV, M/M, Made up backstory bit, References to Depression, but mostly canon compliant, the boys are all grown up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26225689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrotheology44/pseuds/Astrotheology44
Summary: Before the other got the Spirit of Lightning, he thinks, Ren embodied lighting itself, as though he was calling and carving up a passage of it to his own heart. Striking and trying to remain targeted and clear even if his livelihood may waver, incredible determination and rapid edges betraying his directed goals. A formidable feat of power, Ren stands like an exercise of that cold fire, but it leaves behind harsh bits and poorly wired electricity that can burn into the wielder's heart.
Relationships: Horokeu Usui & Ren Tao, Tao Ren/Usui Horokeu | "Trey Racer" Horohoro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Heaven Calling

It comes with the shaman's practice to see the natural world as a living and breathing interwoven tapestry of spirits. In the purest loneliness they made it as though there was nowhere to be alone and with them the drop of each identity is part of the greater ocean. This is how it clicks the first time he sees the _Great Spirit_.

  
Looking back, he has understood it before. Across _spaces_ , the spirits lighting up the greenery of ever-spanning fields on a raining day was a blessing. Across _time_ , still feeling Kororo's presence has proven to Horohoro that nobody and nothing is truly lost as long as the heart calls out to these moments, the waters of life always springing forwards.

  
Before the other got the Spirit of Lightning, he thinks, Ren embodied _lighting itself_ , like he was calling and carving up a passage of it to his own heart. Striking and trying to remain targeted and clear even if his livelihood may waver, incredible determination and rapid edges betraying his directed goals.

A formidable feat of power, Ren stands like an exercise of that cold fire, but it leaves behind harsh bits and poorly wired electricity that can burn into the wielder's heart. He thinks Ren may have had a heart made for this, while he took decades to unravel those things that his younger self felt constantly flooded by. Thinks that maybe for him the _water_ needed a heart that can be filled like an empty cup, bit by bit until it realizes its own depth.

Lightning forms outside of the sky and peers fearlessly in. It can burn down destroying entire lives and this he has seen and witnessed when he was very young back in Hokkaido. More in the heaviness his father usually carried with the newly found responsibilities of keeping his remaining family safe, of telling them to stay in and gather because there wouldn't be much to eat. To stay in because a great storm had hit.

There had been a great _flash_ ; one that his youthful scepticism didn't care to find out about until the elders had dragged them out all out for reconstruction and to learn of the other side of how terrible nature can be, to see the effects of a great fire.

He hated it then. The immense loss in the fields and forests might as well have been echoing his own incipient jadedness like waves, another recollection of the capacity of their Gods for both life and destruction and a fresh reminder of natural law. He recalls the distant powerlessness it brought to him and Pilika and the subsequent understanding of _hope_ when a few months after the site that was burned stood blooming fresh with fertile ground and he thought he maybe understood.

Like enlightenment, a posthumous _gift_ from the Spirits of the burned ground of back then, when something appears overwhelming but invites warmth and change in the end, an experience that dares one to grow. He thought the law of the strongest to be much the same. His heart had been trying to outgrow the numbness then, but he hadn’t fully managed it.

  
He never met Ren when the lightning was his fury, when he burned into his examiner and then _man after man_ at the beginning of their respective fights, but he sees the way the remnants of it burned through Ren himself and the young shaman afterwards left to remake himself from the ashes of his crumbled childhood and he thinks he understands. He can't be too sure and he has never been the sharpest but there is an intuition like rain rolling down into his heart nevertheless and he feels pulled to the other.

He did meet a Ren that would be just as cutthroat and set on piercing his way through life and the static of it was almost instantaneous, the two of them magnetically working forwards from then on.  
He can feel the tension that the other has carried for most of their years spent bickering and in fumbling camaraderie thereafter. It's easy to remember outside of personal motivations and training and dreaming, the vivid sensation of clouds gathering like they flow through his blood and he's small in the forest again when he stood next to him, the brief memory of stringent ozone and the crackling of the sky before it gives in, before Ren gets the sharp glint in his eyes and charges the enemy relentlessly.

It's a familiar and reassuring fearsomeness, to be next to someone like this in the eye of the storm, even if it always poses a challenge.

Ren's light is like memories of life's cycles, the splintered sky inviting rain, and Horo can feel that presence tugging at his heart, the immense energy gathering memories of family, their tears and of wishing he could let out all of the frustration when it had really _mattered_ in one flash, instead of being hallowed up by guilt in the endless tide.

Perhaps this is why the other’s first death feels like an immeasurable loss, like the first storm he witnessed, except this time there is a fear that nothing will grow from it, no warmth returned to the fields as he takes it out unconsciously on Yoh.  
He thinks he might be able to finally access that now, the power that comes with the acceptance of no longer being a boy with hands over his eyes and jokes and whines and detachment when something cuts deep, without needing to ward away the feelings and make sure the ice doesn't turn into water, that the thought doesn't betray the emotion and the stagnancy doesn't unveil the flow of life.

He understands now after it has all melted away and control over ice and waters flows that the heart of a shaman must be wired to the flow of the whole, body soul and personality in tandem. The blocks that still linger there and show up on tired and less hopeful days he can see through excessive hardness and cracks in the ice and at the very least ageing has helped in understanding this.

Even if the spirits are a guarantee of interconnectedness, they are not a guarantee of _change_. Only the living get to grow and _change_ and this is what makes life worth protecting. He finds himself smiling some days just the way Yoh used to, seeing the children they share living space with now, Yoh's son and the new Itako girl and their friends that bring with them new hope. It's a reminder of the ability they still have to enact change, something the departed Spirits as dear as they are cannot do without their help to merge and live through memory.

He knows more than anyone that there are things one can do now that _cannot_ be undone, that the Sprits of their departed are ever there yet no longer alight and able to transcend their conditions and he thinks he understands the double edged knife of the life lightning brings and can take, that he may understand Ren's own struggles even more.

But he isn't so sure. Not when he had spent a great deal of his early life trying to escape the burden of what seemed to be oppressive duty. It's almost envy sometimes, how easily Ren carries it, but at times it's obvious that it's carrying him instead and pressing a heavy toll on his shoulders. It's those times that Horo wants nothing more than to lend him a hand. There is a flow in the gap between them that reminds of the ocean, he hopes that this is his process of understanding slowly reaching shore towards the other.

He doesn't know what he would do instead. Doesn't know what it is that makes their elemental Spirits now an almost predestined part of them and cannot claim to be a sage about it.

  
But when he hears the news of Jeanne's death- a sinking weight, one more hopeless crack in the sky of the world they haven't yet managed to right under Hao's game and cannot right without the help of the next generation, it _does_ click. Realizing that there is a chance Ren will burn everything in his path and himself once more, he doesn't need to be told twice before he's ready to go chasing after.

As the tension will crack and this light will shine through, the water only naturally follows after.

**Author's Note:**

> Fellas is it gay to want to save your homie from himself?  
> I have had this sitting in my drafts for a long while. I care about those two still. Catch you at the 2021 remake.


End file.
